United Prairie announces new location plans

By Jerry W. Kram

For more than 85 years, the United Prairie cooperative has served this area, first as the Farmers Union Cooperative organized in old Sanish in 1929, which moved to New Town as Lake Sakakawea claimed the community in the early 1950s.

The cooperative thrived in its new location, said General Manager John Reese, providing car repairs, tires, ag supplies and service and propane to residents of New Town and the surrounding area. With the Bakken Boom, United Prairie saw a big upswing in its business, so much so that it could no longer serve the community out of its original home on Main Street. Over the years, the company’s propane business moved across the street, its tire shop moved to the west side of town on North Dakota Highway 23 and the cooperative opened and expanded its C-store off of College Drive.

With its services and personnel spread out over several facilities, Reese said the cooperative has been considering consolidating its facilities on a parcel of land adjoining North Dakota Highway 1804 just north of the entrance to the truck bypass. He said that currently the cooperative had to store ag supplies in a couple of different lots and it will be more efficient to have all the material in one location.

"We have been looking at this for about two years," Reese said. "We secured the property about a year ago. We’ve been in the planning stages, dealing with the state and county on access, the city with annexation, which hasn’t been easy. We’ve gotten a lot of milestones turned. The next step is getting water and sewer to the site."